Controversial opinion: The biggest reason for the massive disconnect between crypto prices and crypto adoption is that 4 of the top 5 assets (by market cap) are largely uninvestable. $BTC - The quantum fear is not going away (even though it's a fairly easy technical fix, it's a much harder governance fix) - It's not cool to own BTC now that blackrock and JP Morgan dominate it (see rise in $ZEC) - It's not digital gold (in fact, actual tokenized gold exists) - It's not scarce (endless derivs and structured products make the 21mm cap useless unless people start using physical bitcoin, which no one does). - It's not an inflation hedge - It's not a medium of exchange (stablecoins are) $ETH & $SOL - high inflation outweighing any fee capture (this is why market cap goes up while price goes down) - Infinite blockspace relative to usage, with more L1 competition coming - Fat protocol thesis on life support (and other than that thesis, no one has ever made a good argument for why L1s actually capture value) - You need ~1000x more activity / transactions to warrant today's valuations (meaning SOL and ETH are not worthless, it's just VERY hard to justify their current valuations). (For the record, I'm bullish on both Solana and Ethereum's prospects for further growth (relative to other L1s), I just don't think their tokens capture much value from that growth). $XRP - Literally the opposite of good token design. The token does absolutely nothing, and has virtually no linkage to Ripple - Ripple sells ~$3-4 billion of XRP tokens per year to fund equity repurchases (people argue all day about the efficacy of token buybacks, yet no one seems to care that Ripple dumps tokens to buyback their own stock?) This is why crypto is so broken. The entire industry was built on 4 assets that all suck as investments, which is why all of the exchanges and brokers cater only to fast money traders and macro funds/CTAs instead of real fundamental investors (even though fundamental investors make up the majority of the investor world). Of these 4 assets, I'd say i'm most likely wrong about $BTC simply because it is entirely narrative/faith based, and that can change on a dime, plus BTC always goes up eventually. I find it impossible to underwrite Bitcoin as an investment, but I do understand why others like it. Can this change? I hope so. It's very hard for an industry to grow when the top assets go down, but not impossible. It would require massive rotation (which is what we're seeing in equities right now -- a rotation out of Mag 7, private credit, and tech and into healthcare, energy, etc). IMO, there are a LOT of good crypto investments right now that accrue value via the adoption of crypto and blockchain. Aligning your investments with the actual growth areas should work. Almost all of the growth and adoption of crypto and blockchain is happening in 3 financial areas: 1) Stablecoin/payments - harder to invest in pure plays, but there are some private stocks 2) DeFi -- tons of ways to capture this growth via equity-like tokens 3) RWA tokenizaton - while most of this value accrues to middlemen like Securitize and Blackrock, there are some pure plays as well. If this industry pivots away from BTC ETH SOL XRP and memecoins, and into the stocks and equity-like tokens that fuel the growth of DeFi, payments and RWAs, then price will start matching adoption.

I should clarify further. This is why very little related to existing stablecoins or layer 1s or RWA tokenization is investable, including SOL, ETH and other L1s and L2s. Everyone wants to build their own chain, no one wants to invest in someone else’s chain or even use someone else’s product. There is tremendous interest and growth in stablecoins/payments and RWA tokenization, but none of that growth is accruing value to any of the existing infrastructure. The new players want to own the stack, not use the stack. BUT — that doesn’t make crypto uninvestable. It just means you’re being steered in the wrong direction by exchanges and indexes and influencers. Stop investing in infrastructure that is either being passed over, or doesn’t benefit at all from usage. Instead, invest in apps. There are a few applications built on blockchain rails that are successful. And that is where the value accrues. Fat protocol thesis is dead. Fat apps are where the value lies. This includes (but not limited to) - prediction markets - Perp and spot dexes ($HYPE $AERO etc, but value depends on tokenomics) - token launchpads (ie $PUMP) - lend / borrow platforms (ie $SYRUP, $AAVE) - a few DePIN projects (don’t love these but very long term could work). Crypto isn’t dead. It’s actually a free for all of new entrants with no moat for incumbents and low barriers to entry for new entrants.